402: A humanist congregation, local issues

James Croft is the Outreach Director of the Ethical Society of St. Louis, a longstanding humanist congregation, and one of the largest in the world.

In this conversation with Bart Campolo, James talks about what his congregation is doing to engage with the issues of St. Louis, a place which has made many headlines in the past number of years for racial strife. James subscribes to ‘deed before creed’, an interest less in what people believe and more in what they commit to doing. His congregation is creating safe places to ask questions that people are worried about asking, or which may be loaded, in areas like LGBTQ matters or on topics like white fragility. In addition, he and Bart get into a discussion on the usefulness of protests and revolutions versus better conversations (spoiler alert: they eventually agree that both are of use).